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Monday, December 28, 2015

Catastrophic Climate Change: Caused by Capitalism

by Jack
Gerson

The
much-publicized commitments made at the recent United Nations Climate
Conference (the “Paris
Agreement”) are far short of what will be needed to prevent catastrophic
climate change. The bourgeois politicians and their corporate masters are
feeling the heat from the growing movement against climate change and the far
broader awareness of a vast number of people around the world that global
warming is real, climate change is here, it’s accelerating, it’s already
wreaking havoc (extreme weather; rising seas; etc.), and it is getting worse a
lot faster than had been projected. Voluntary targets, relying on the good
faith of the world’s profit-driven corporate leaders, have little chance of
doing the job. Nor should we wait for some billionaire-to-beentrepreneur to pull the world out of the
fire with a technology fix. Climate change is first and foremost a social
problem, rooted in what capitalist society values (profits) and prioritizes (profitability).
The longer capitalism runs the world, the more intense climate change will be.

It
was pretty clear by the late ‘80s, if not earlier, that major shifts to ‘green
energy’ were needed asap, as James Hansen (then the government’s leading climate
scientist) told Congress in 1988.The
greenhouse effect was already clear, and it was evident that human activity was
a major contributor. But we did not get those major shifts to green energy. Instead
we got decades of gross fossil fuel consumption, enabled by wanton
environmental destruction: increased offshore drilling, wholesale mountain top
removal, strip mining, fracking, etc. The Paris conference was, if not an
outright fraud (which is what James Hansen calls it), then far less than
half-measures. They’re still intent on taking fossil fuels out of the ground.
Hence the coal trains criss-crossing the country (ticking time bombs routed
through major urban areas, like the Bay Area.) Hence while China is trying to
cut down its domestic coal use, Chinese companies are increasing their export
sales of coal mining equipment. Even Germany, which has an image as a green
energy leader,has actually increased overall coal production and use — and it’s
using the dirtiest, most polluting kind of coal (lignite). Why? Because it’s
cheap. (See http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26820405).

Capitalists
will do what costs least and enables the greatest profit.:

“The International Energy Agency’s ‘World Energy
Outlook 2015’ pegs global fossil-fuel subsidies at $490 billion and those for
renewables at $135 billion. The IMF, which includes in its calculation the
failure to account for negative externalities of energy use (what it calls
‘post-tax subsidies’), pegs global energy subsidies at $5.3 trillion, most of
it for fossil fuels.” Jessica Mathews, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, letter to The Economist (printed in December 19, 2015 issue, p.
20)

In
Paris, the U.S. committed to reducing carbon emissions to 80% below 2005 levels
by 2050. But in 1997, the U.S. signed the Kyoto Protocol, committing to
reducing carbon emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2020. Now, with 2020 less
than five years away, U..S. carbon emissions have actually increased by more than
25%. The Paris agreement, then, shifts the target 30 years into the future,
increases it from 1997’s Kyoto target, and has increased the target figure
(because now it’s 80% of the 2005 levels, where previously it had been 80% of
the significantly lower 1990 levels).Furthermore, the Paris Agreement is voluntary: its targets are not
binding, and failing to meet them incurs no penalty. [This reminds me of the
many “peace” conferences, each of which announces that this time for sure we’re
winding down the [Afghan war; the Iraq war; the Syrian war; the …]

Since
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was signed, carbon emissions increased rather than
decreased as fossil fuel exploration, extraction, and consumption went over the
top. Tar sands; fracking; offshore drilling in the Arctic Slope and elsewhere
along the fragile continental shelf —the fossil fuel party raged on and on,
despite the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster; despite multiple explosions of coal
trains; despite well-known dangers associated with fracking.

Will
the voluntary controls be implemented? Not likely, unless there’s a protracted
global economic slump that sharply reduces energy consumption. It’s true that
coal production has recently fallen significantly — an estimated two-thirds of
the world’s coal production is now unprofitable. But coal has largely been
replaced by natural gas, which may prove to be an even greater threat.Natural gas extraction is accompanied by
leakage of methane, a greenhouse gas estimated to have 72 times the impact of
carbon dioxide. And we know full well that for at least the near term future,
oil production will continue and may even increase: for example, as oil prices
dipped over the past year or two, Saudi Arabia maintained high levels of
production. China, whose cities are choking in killer smog, is cutting back
sharply on coal production — but Chinese coal equipment manufacturers have
increased their exports of coal mining equipment.

And
even should the U.S., China, and the EU somehow meet the targets set in Paris,
all other countries would have to reduce their emissions by a far greater
proportion — as much as 10 times more aggressively — in order to avoid global
temperature increasing more than 2degreesC by 2030.
That is why the Paris Agreement was labeled “a fraud” by James Hansen. It’s why
Hansen, Naomi Klein (author of “This Changes Everything”), and other climate
activists say that even in the unlikely event that the industrial states meet
those voluntary emissions targets, global temperatures are likely to increase
by more than 3 degrees Celsius. That would be disastrous. And it’s not just
environmentalist activists like who warn of this. Here’s commentary from The
Economist, the renowned British financial magazine:

“It is vital, they [the world’s leaders] declared,
that the world’s temperature does not climb much more than 1.5 degrees Celsius
above pre-industrial levels; and yet they simultaneously celebrated a new
climate agreement that got nowhere close to preventing such a rise.

“The individual pledges that nations made going
into the Paris talks — which they will now be expected, though not compelled,
to honor — are estimated to put the world on course for something like 3
degrees Celsius of warming. In the non-linear universe of climate change, 3
degrees Celsius represents a lot more than twice as much risk and harm as 1.5
degrees Celsius.” (The Economist, 12/19/15, p. 16)

Examples
of what would happen at 3 degrees Celsius: rising seas swallowing island
nations, southern Florida (including Miami), much of the eastern seaboard of
the U.S., Bengla Desh; increase in extreme weather: more droughts, more floods,
more catastrophic storms (we’re seeing this already, and this is just the
beginning).

The
fact is that climate models have tended to underestimate the pace of climate
change. For example, the Greenland glaciers have been melting more rapidly than
had initially been projected. So what’s coming may be considerably worse than
we’re expecting. Indeed, some climate scientists believe that we may be on the
verge of truly catastrophic events if, as growing evidence suggests, global
warming results in the Gulf Stream shutting down.

Things
should never have gone this far. Decades ago — surely by the late 1980s — the
world ought to have prioritized research and development that would have
enabled a full transition to renewable energy. But that wasn’t a viable
business opportunity: there were trillions to be made in fracking, tar sands,
shale oil, offshore oil, coal. They appropriated the profits, we pay the price.

We’ve
gone so far up the wrong path that now there may be only one viable way out: negative
emissions. First, of course, reducing emissions from current levels, but going
on to remove more carbon out of the atmosphere than we’re putting into it.
Indeed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the organization
established by the U.N. and the World Meteorological Organization to assess
climate change) says that the only way global temperature increase can be held
to under 2 degrees C is through achieving overall negative emissions.

Can
this be done?

A
small but growing number of engineers and scientists believe that it can be
done by refining already existing techniques that remove carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere, and then using renewable energy sourcesto convert the carbon dioxide to low-carbon
fuels. This is called direct air capture (or direct air carbon capture), and
it’s being pursued by several technology startups (including one funded by Bill
Gates, and another funded by Audi.)Three years ago, the American Physical Society (APS) declared that
direct air carbon capture was prohibitively expensive and was therefore not
viable, and that was the kiss of death as far as most of industry and
government were concerned. However, the APS report apparently greatly
overestimated the cost of direct air capture (see https://climatediscovery.org/REFERENCES%20Climate%20Change%202015-The%20Latest%20Science,%20Melton.pdf and http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jul/14/carbon-direct-air-capture-startups-tech-climate). But regardless of the
cost, if removing carbon from the air is essential to prevent catastrophic
climate change — and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among many
others, insists that it is — then that path needs to be pursued, regardless of
the price tag. A society that puts the interest of people and the planet before
profit would do so. It is a sad commentary that such a course was even
questioned, let alone rejected or at least delayed. As it becomes clear that
extreme measures are needed, it may be a case of too little, too late.

Even
if direct air capture can be developed by the tech startups, and even if the
method is employed on a large enough scale, there are likely to be unforeseen
consequences. This method should have been refined and tested decades ago, and
after the bugs were shaken out and the side effects mitigated it could have
been employed, together with the renewable energy that likewise should have
been refined and tested and then employed on a mass scale years ago. But that’s
not how capitalism operates.

What
was really needed then, and is needed even more now, is to change the world’s
priorities by taking power out of the hands of the corporate profiteers and
their political mouthpieces. These decisions need to be made democratically,
and collectively, by the vast majority, who have all the facts at their
disposal and put the needs of the majority first.

Capitalist
society’s priorities are all messed up. They’re upside down. The corporate
forces and individuals who run this world base their decisions on profit, not
on what human beings and the planet need to survive. So we may not get the
needed investment in direct air carbon capture — or, if we do, it may be too
little, too late. Or it may have negative consequences.These problems didn’t have to be, and
certainly not at their current pace and scale. Those are a product of the way
that this society is organized. We need to reorganize society along very different
lines: what we need is socialism. That means wresting power from those who now
control and run society, and are leading it (and us) to ruin.

4 comments:

I think it can be narrowed down to the military-industrial complex and the (successful) weaponization of weather and now the entire geosphere. The very planet itself is now a weapon of mass destruction.

Jack Thank you again very much for your article. It is outstanding. It is just great. As you explain capitalism will destroy life on earth as we know it unless capitalism is destroyed. In this swine of a book that I am writing, well trying to write, I in my arrogance try to deal with historical materialism. The various systems that developed, Primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism now hopefully socialism. I think there were bits of dialectical overlap, steps forward and steps back, interpentration of opposites etc, but I think this was basically the process. I was talking with a guy here some time ago and i was saying that human society did not inevitably evolve progressively. There were old societies, see the ruins of the pyramids and big societies in jungles, in the deserts, under the oceans etc. In Ireland where I am from there are old stone monuments which show the builders knew about astronomy and science. These old societies were not always followed by societies that were more advanced. On occasion some of these societies found themselves blocked and had no new class to take them forward and so fell back into more primitive ways again. I was discussing this with this guy in relation to today and how that i thought that capitalism was at a point where it was blocking human progress. In fact more, where it was threatening life on earth. He argued that there was something in the human being that would always allow the species to find a way forward. He did not convince me. I remained and remain convinced that unless capitalism is overthrown it will destroy life on earth as we know it. Jack your article has been very helpful to me in my thinking on this. Thank you. It shows that capitalism will destroy life on earth as we know it, (there will be many species left, but of a many and varied nature and where the human species the most advanced species so far are either wiped out or reduced to gibbering clumps of creatures. I think Jack London wrote something called the Scarlet Plague along these lines.) Life on earth as we know it will be destroyed unless we destroy capitalism. History i believe shows that unless the working class takes power and changes the world that life on earth as we know it will be destroyed. As wee Trotsky said, maybe himself not even seeing it to the full extent we can see it today, the future of the human species is the crisis of the proletarian leadership. If a cutting edge is not put on the chisel that is the working class then capitalism will, with its advanced science and technology, with its climate change and pollution which flows from this, with its potential nuclear war, will destroy life on earth as we know it.

Thank you again Jack for your very good, excellent article. It really helped me understand the full implications of the climate change crisis better Sean O'Torain.